Page 24 of The Start of the Story
I waved an arm to airily indicate that this would probably be the case and anyway I wasn’t in the least worried about having enough material of the quality that would keep the money coming. ‘How about you? You sound happy.’
‘I think I’ve finally done enough work for us to be able to send the archaeologists up on the moor there.’ He pointed with an elbow in the direction of his disputed ‘settlement’. ‘They won’t go out without a good chance of coming down on some decent archaeology. It’s too expensive to start digging with no idea if there’s anything there.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yep. I found documents that talk of tracks and buildings that seem to have been laid out in a grid pattern, typical of a small Roman township.’ He put the butter down and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Could be the discovery of a lifetime,’ he said, hunting down the bread.
‘Yes, you’ve stressed the life-changing possibilities.’
Now he turned around. My expression must have given away what I felt, because he took half a step towards me, then clearly thought better of it. I could get up quite a swing with my handbag, if I needed to.
‘We’ll not be touching your Fairy Stane, Rowan.’
‘Good.’ I sounded short, as though the word had been snipped off from a much longer unsaid sentence.
‘Unless we absolutely have to,’ he went on. ‘But I’m pretty confident we’ll find what we need without disturbing your site.’
I stalked past him and went upstairs to change. It wasn’t fair, this constant making me aware that he could ruin an entire lifetime’s worth of storytelling with one casual order. All right,the stone could be an important proof for his work. But wasn’t itequallyimportant that it remained a mystery? All those stories of the Little People, the fairyland parties, the possible release of the fey into the world, they’d all be blown out of the water if it became known that the stone had been lifted and proved to reveal – what? Nothing but dirt? A small hole filled in by a farmer so his cattle didn’t break a leg?
Stories areimportant too.
I changed slowly and went back down to find that Connor had made a sandwich and was sitting at the table with a book open, flipping pages with buttery fingers. ‘I finally got around to reading some of your material,’ he said, swallowing vigorously. ‘It’s pretty good.’
I pursed my lips and put the kettle on. ‘Yes, well, they don’t give you grants for this kind of thing if you can barely string two words together.’
He closed the book up and I saw the cover. It was one of mine, an early publication that had been part of my PhD. ‘You’ve got butter all over it,’ I said, mildly for an author watching their work despoiled with dairy products.
‘I’ll give it a wipe. So, why the fairy stories? Nieces and nephews queuing up to listen to you read?’
I shook my head. ‘Only child,’ I said.
‘That’s lucky.’ Almost without thinking, Connor opened the window and flung his sandwich crusts outside. ‘Two of the boys are married, and there seems to be a new offspring every fortnight.’ Then he smiled at me. ‘Ah, they’re grand really.’
It wasn’t so bad now. After Elliot died, when it had turned out that I wasn’t pregnant, I’d found it hard to hear tales of others seemingly spontaneously giving birth. Friends, acquaintances, workmates – for a while it had seemed as though everyone was sporting a bump or wearing a baby strapped to their chest. Part of the whole feeling of loss, I’d reasoned, once I’d managed myway out of the grief-imposed sensation that the whole world was carrying on to spite me. There was absolutely no reason why everyone I met should stop breeding because I’d lost my husband and my chance.
‘How lovely,’ I said politely.
‘Mam’s beside herself with joy.’ He seemed to realise that I was not cooing and wanting details, pictures, names. ‘She’d like all of us to repopulate Ireland, if it was up to her.’
‘Apart, presumably, from Eamonn.’ I began making two mugs of tea, and Connor laughed.
‘Well, yes. But it’s interesting, y’know, how Catholic things were up here too. That manor you talked about, the one on your map?’
‘Evercey Manor?’
‘That’s your man. The family there managed to slip under the radar. Presumably they paid lip service to the new official religion but stayed Catholic. Most of their tenants out here were Catholic too.’
‘Well, they would be. You didn’t go against the lord of the manor,’ I said tartly, putting a mug down next to him. ‘Way out here I shouldn’t think they were bothered too much. It was too isolated. Three miles or more to the church, perhaps they had their own chapel.’
‘Keep quiet, pretend to do as you’re told, worship in your own way when nobody is looking.’ Connor raised his mug to me. ‘Thank you.’
‘Why are you so interested in the old manor?’ I was glad to move away from the subject of the stone. The more he dwelled on his Roman town, the more chance there was that he’d decide to lift my stone on a whim. ‘Bit outside your area of expertise, isn’t it?’
He leaned back in his chair, sipping from the mug and looking out into the blackness of the night that lay beyond thewindow. ‘I was raised a Catholic,’ he said. ‘I’m interested, that’s all. You don’t think that the past religious history might have an impact on some of the folk stories out here? Oppression of the old religion, being forced underground, living your lives in a state of denial? Maybe a nasty case of guilt about having to pretend to turn your back on your religion while you practised in secret?’
‘Maybe. There are lots of reasons why people create myths. To make sense of the unknown, as cautionary tales, to put things into perspective, to account for losses. Back before the days when science ran riot, people had to find their own reasons for things they didn’t understand, and they did it through stories.’
Connor looked at me over his mug, eyebrows raised. ‘And this is where we’re both on the same side, Rowan. Memories. Yours are embodied in the stories and mine are trapped in the stones and the documents. We don’t have to fight over it.’
